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machado: forget the gratitude journal. what makes you feel free?

listing what she was grateful for in a fancy-looking notebook with sparkles on the cover only made lisa machado feel more fearful and aware that she could lose it all.

by lisa machado

mar 13 2023

6 minute read

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have you found what makes you feel free?

a strong coffee with dark chocolate, a dog invited up onto the bed, an avocado, and bruce springsteen on repeat makes everything feel ok, writes lisa machado. getty

i met up with a few friends for a coffee last week. we’d been talking about how unbelievable it was that our children were old enough to be getting ready to go to university. after a quick catch-up on where each kid was planning to study — and lamenting, ‘oh, where does the time go’ — the conversation quickly spiralled downward toward the perils of aging, the relentlessness of wrinkles (“that stuff about laugh lines is b.s.,” one friend sputtered over her frothy cappuccino) and why ‘crepey’ was now an appropriate way to describe the skin on our necks.

as the cappuccino friend went on about how the guy at the local bulk food store had suddenly stopped shamelessly flirting with her over the quinoa and dates, an older woman — maybe in her seventies — sitting at the next table, looked over and smiled. her fingers were long and manicured, the nails painted the colour of red wine. in between her thumb and forefinger she held a small yellow square of paper — earl grey, i think — attached to the string of the tea bag she was slowly swirling around in the tall black mug in front of her.

she leaned toward us, as if she was going to say something, and then seemed to change her mind. instead, she stared into the mug. the red head scarf she was wearing sat a bit to the side of her head, showing short wisps of shiny white hair above one of her ears.

it was the cappuccino friend who caught the woman’s attention again with a comment about the concept of freedom — she said that this was the time in our lives to catch up on things, to reorganize the closets, paint the bathroom, take a course, maybe change jobs.

the woman looked over.

“is that about right? i asked her, laughing.

“it’s actually not so much about the freedom to fill your time with things,” she said, after clearing her throat. “it’s not even about getting older. it’s about figuring out what makes you feel free.”

and she didn’t mean free as in doing whatever you want, she explained. rather, free, as in a lightness of being, having a sense that things are going to be ok — that you are going to be ok.

the woman said her kids had been out of the house for many years, and that, as a single mom, when they left for school, she grieved. but she also filled her time by starting a small business, travelling and volunteering — it was what all of the kids’ moms were doing, she said, and it was fine, but it didn’t feel as good as she had expected.

i was very aware of what was good in my life — namely, that i wasn’t dead

soon after, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “this is round two,” she said, smiling just slightly as she pointed to the soft fabric wrapped around her head. she described the all-consuming fear and anxiety that kept her in bed all of the time, the flowers and letters that would pile up outside her apartment door, and the messages from friends that filled her voice mailbox — ones she never responded to.

“i had free time,” she said. “but i wasn’t free.”

she apologized for interrupting our conversation, but the cappuccino friend urged her to finish. the woman said that she was waiting for a blood test a month after finding out that her first cancer was in remission when a man in a hospital gown rolled by in a wheelchair. the strap of her yellow leather purse that was sitting on the floor got caught in the front wheel of the chair, stopping it suddenly. the man in the chair laughed, introduced himself, and struck up a conversation about wheelchairs, why purses shouldn’t be on the floor (it’s a sign that you don’t care about your money, according to superstition, he said) and cancer.

“we shared our warrior stories, and i told him that i was in remission,” the woman said. “he wanted to know why i looked so sad.”

missing her kids was the first thing she mentioned, she said, and of course, the cancer — how scary it was with all the anxiety and uncertainty. the man looked her in the eye and asked her what made her feel free.

“i didn’t know what he meant,” she said. “so i listed all the things i had been doing — reorganizing cupboards, crocheting hats for premature babies, volunteering at the library. you know, the things i was doing with my new freedom.”

the man made a face, she said, as she squinted her eyes almost closed, furrowed her brow and pursed her lips like, we assumed, he had.

she said he was really hung up on how important it was to do things that make us feel free — not just filling time with more tasks and goals because we have more freedom to do so. he wanted to know what gave her peace from the fear, anxiety and uncertainty. he talked about lying in his bed and listening to all 100 songs in the “happy happy, joy joy” playlist his son made him, driving on the highway with the windows open, and the cracking sound that the cap on a new bottle of wine makes when you first open it.

she took the last sip of her tea, tipping her head back to get the last drop, crumpled her napkin in one hand and dropped it into the mug. as she put her coat on, my friends exploded into urgent exclamations of the things that made them feel free — sipping a hot coffee, reading a book in bed, a quiet sunday morning. we wished the woman luck as she walked out the door.

she reminded me of a discussion i once had with a therapist after i was diagnosed with leukemia. thankfully, the medication was working, and i had minimal side effects. yet, anxiety and fear of the unknown had me pinned down. in the seconds that it took a doctor to say those scary words, i lost so much, including the sense of being “free” — free of fear and worry, free of anxiety, and free to plan ahead. it was gone, and i was flailing.

the therapist urged me to practice gratitude. write down all the things that are good in your life, she’d say. i failed miserably at this, mostly because it made me angry. after all, no one was more aware than me of all that was good in my life — my kids, namely, and the fact that i wasn’t dead. listing things in a fancy-looking journal with sparkles on the cover only made me feel more sad, worried, fearful and aware that i could lose it all. i needed a different strategy.

amid panic attacks that would come in the night, so intense that my fingers would stiffen and be unbendable, i looked for the things that gave me some respite from the churning anxiety and uncertainty — the things that, i now realize after hearing the woman in the coffee shop’s story — made me feel free. taking my dogs for long walks, subscribing to the weekend paper (even though everyone said print was dead) and spending sunday morning on the couch flipping the pages — the smell of newsprint made me happy. a strong coffee with a bunch of squares of dark chocolate, a dog invited up onto the bed, an avocado, a sniff of my dogs’ paws (that cosy popcorn smell) and bruce springsteen on repeat. yes, that’s it.

and through many years of meeting people with life-threatening illnesses and the people who cared for them, i have learned that this isn’t a some secret salve. in fact, immersing oneself into things that offer peace and joy is something that many people do instinctively. but if you need a little bit of a reminder, take this as your nudge — and if you can’t find anything that makes you feel free, you have some important work to do.

the woman in the coffee shop came back, she had left her gloves on her chair. she was just in time to see the cappuccino friend lean back in her chair and put her hands in her pockets as she stretched her legs out.

“she’s right,” my friend said. “screw the closets.”

lisa machado is the executive producer of healthing.ca. follow her @iamlisamachado.

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lisa machado

lisa machado began her journalism career as a financial reporter with investor's digest and then rogers media. after a few years editing and writing for a financial magazine, she tried her hand at custom publishing and then left to launch a canadian women's magazine with a colleague. after being diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, lisa founded the canadian cml network and shifted her focus to healthcare advocacy and education.

machado: forget the gratitude journal. what makes you feel free?

listing what she was grateful for in a fancy-looking notebook with sparkles on the cover only made lisa machado feel more fearful and aware that she could lose it all.

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machado: forget the gratitude journal. what makes you feel free?

listing what she was grateful for in a fancy-looking notebook with sparkles on the cover only made lisa machado feel more fearful and aware that she could lose it all.

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